Last Night in College Basketball: Vanderbilt Beats Texas And is Here to Stay
Men’s college basketball, women’s college basketball – there’s no shortage of college ball, every night.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help you figure out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in college basketball.
When a No. 5 beating a No. 4 is a real upset
This is not meant to be offensive to Vanderbilt, in any way — the Commodores are the No. 5 team in the country, after all, and were the second-to-last undefeated team on the women’s side before South Carolina took them down. But Vandy beating No. 4 Texas on Thursday — and doing so after going up by 26 points and still winning by 16 even after the Longhorns woke up a bit — is significant on the level of an upset larger than the difference in the teams’ rankings indicates.
The thing is that Vanderbilt is, comparatively, new on the scene: Texas is part of an established group at the top of the rankings that now always includes UCLA, UConn, South Carolina and LSU — Vanderbilt is the interloper breaking up that group here. In its 45 seasons, the Dores have had a top-5 appearance in the poll just six times, and the most recent of those before 2025-2026 was in 2001-2003. Vanderbilt did not make the poll at all for 10 seasons before reappearing in 2024-2025, where it peaked at No. 23 and was not in the final, and the Commodores were ranked No. 19 in this year’s preseason poll.
Which means that this W over Texas — the second top-5 win for coach Shea Ralph’s Vanderbilt this year, and the first time that’s happened for the Dores since 2000-2001 — is proof of its belonging here and the lengthening of the list of teams that can topple the established powers. Yes, Vanderbilt lost to South Carolina, 103-74, but it has also defeated current No. 6 LSU (65-61), outlasted No. 7 Michigan (72-69) and No. 18 Kentucky (84-83) and dropped 102 points on No. 10 Oklahoma on Monday. The Dores aren’t invincible, but until still-undefeated UConn possibly proves otherwise, no one else this season is, anyway. Vanderbilt is legit, and has announced as much with its pair of top-5 victories and six Quad 1 wins… and with potentially more to come, with a Kentucky rematch, No. 23 Alabama and No. 22 Tennessee still left on the schedule.
The Longhorns’ issue was the aggressiveness of Vanderbilt’s offense. The Dores went up big early, and Texas is built for grind-it-out wins against tough offensive teams, not playing catch-up. It has an offense that can score big against a defense that will let it cook — the Longhorns are right next to Vanderbilt in Offensive Rating, after all — but struggles when what is needed is lots of points, fast. Texas ranks 345th out of 363 Division I women’s basketball teams in made 3-pointers per game, at 3.92, and shoots 31.3% from deep, 163rd. Vanderbilt is 14th at 37.1% and fifth in made 3s, averaging 9.77 per game. Vanderbilt has Mikayla Blakes; Texas does not.
In a related story, the sophomore guard dropped 34 points on the Longhorns by shooting 3-for-6 from 3 and relentlessly attacking the basket, resulting in 15 trips to the stripe and 13 made free throws. It was her fourth-consecutive 30-point game, and Blakes, after the last one, became the nation’s leading scorer and is now at 26.2 points per game.
Vanderbilt was up 27-15 after the first quarter, and 47-30 after the first half. Texas is not built to easily dig itself out of that hole, and with Vanderbilt playing a much more put together, controlled second half against Texas than against a ranked Michigan team it built an early lead against, the Longhorns had little chance of recovering.
So! Not a great loss for Texas in the sense it has SEC conference implications, but Vanderbilt has officially hit the level where there is no shame in losing to it. That’s great for Vandy, for the SEC and for women’s college basketball.
TCU beats Baylor before West Virginia matchup
TCU has been trying to right the ship with mixed results — it was No. 8 in the country, but losses to Ohio State, Texas Tech and Colorado mixed in with a couple of games that were closer than they should have been eroded confidence in the Horned Frogs and their ranking. TCU entered play against No. 12 Baylor on Thursday as the No. 17 team heading in the wrong direction, but that’s where Olivia Miles came in.
The fifth-year guard who transferred from Notre Dame and is likely to be one of the first few picks in this spring’s WNBA Draft was a monster on Thursday in a game TCU needs to win if it wants to finish atop the Big 12. Miles scored a career-best 40 points — the most of anyone in either women’s or men’s Division I basketball on Thursday — thanks to sinking 10 3-pointers, and she did it on the road, too. Miles also became the first-ever TCU player to score 40 points against a ranked opponent.
A regular problem for TCU during its tough stretch is that Miles is Miles, she’s going to get her baskets and pick up assists and make things go, but her teammates too regularly fail to contribute enough to help out. That was not the case against Baylor, however, as senior forward Marta Suarez hit her own career-high with 27 points on 10-for-18 shooting with 6 rebounds, 4 assists and a steal. While no one else on TCU did much scoring with this duo combining for 67 of the Horned Frogs 83 points — Miles and Suarez alone matched Baylor’s entire output — sophomore center Clara Silva had 8 rebounds, an assist and a steal to help offset the lack of buckets.
[College Basketball Games of the Week: No. 19 West Virginia @ No. 17 TCU]
TCU is now in a three-way tie for second in the Big 12, and facing off against the top team, West Virginia, at home on Saturday. A dub would mean sole possession of first, but an L could mean falling all the way to fourth.
Smith scored 40, too
Olivia Miles wasn’t the only player to hit 40 points on Thursday, as Central Connecticut State’s Darin Smith Jr. reached the same high mark. Smith shot 13-for-20 overall and 3-for-5 from 3, supplementing that efficient scoring with a perfect 11-for-11 from the line. The Blue Devils needed every one of those points, too, as they would defeat New Haven in NEC play by the score of 81-76 even with Smith scoring just under half of its points. Or, really, it was that close because Smith’s output was nearly half of Central Connecticut’s total.
Smith is leading the NEC in scoring at 20.4 points per game, and has 24, 25 and 40 points in each of his last three games, all of which Central Connecticut has won. The sophomore is having a breakout season, as last year he appeared in 31 games but started just one, and scored 6.8 points per game while averaging 18.1 minutes.
Central Connecticut is currently 8-5 and tied for second in the NEC, behind 11-3 Long Island.
UC San Diego-UC Davis went to 3OT
A triple-overtime game is inherently exciting, but a triple-overtime game that also results in a player putting up an eye-popping stat line? That’s the good stuff right there. On Thursday we got UC San Diego and UC Davis going three additional periods, and because of that we also got 29 rebounds — count ‘em! — out of Megan Norris.
The UC Davis senior center struggled shooting, going just 4-for-18 from the field for 13 points, but she also played 54 minutes in a game where just seven players took the floor for the Aggies, and pulled down, again, 29 rebounds. No one else on UC Davis had more than 8, and because of Norris the Aggies still had 54 of the things and a commanding lead of the boards over UC San Diego.
Two things happened here, related to Norris, specifically. The 29 rebounds broke the single-game record for UC Davis, but she also happened to do that in the game where she set the single-season record for rebounds for the program. The 6-foot-3 center is leading the Big West conference with 13.1 rebounds per game, which also puts her third in Division I women’s basketball (prospective parents, two of the top three rebounders in the league are named Megan, take notes), and in her four years of college ball has amassed 981 total rebounds. There is still plenty of season left for her to get to 1,000 for her career — hell, she might even do it in one or two more games.
As for the game itself, the Aggies ended up winning, 88-80, thanks to outscoring the Tritons 13-5 in the final overtime. Norris picked up 10 of her rebounds in the extra 15 minutes — 6 defensive, 4 offensive — including 5 in the final five minutes. That deep into the game, and still pulling down the ball on both sides with that kind of regularity? That’s a baller right there.
Dyer sets Troy single-game rebound record
Norris did not have the lone significant rebounding game of the night, either. Troy senior forward Zay Dyer, already the program leader for career rebounds, set the single-game rebound record for the Trojans on Thursday by grabbing 25 boards against Louisiana. That’s a significant accomplishment in a vacuum, but consider that Troy is known for its rebounding: the Trojans are currently averaging 50.5 rebounds per game, and are the lone team in Division I averaging at least 50.
Dyer is, and has been, a huge part of this rebound-heavy strategy. She’s averaging 12.8 per game this season, fifth in D-I, and woke up this morning with 1,100 career boards. She led the Sun Belt in rebounds last season with 10.4, and is doing so again with a significant bump to her per-game total this year. Don’t forget that she can score as well, though: Dyer logged her Division I-leading 17th double-double of the year on Thursday by scoring 18 points to go with all the rebounds.
All those boards and points helped lead to a 71-55 victory over the Ragin’ Cajuns, which was also the 275th of coach Chanda Rigby’s tenure with Troy, making her the all-time winningest coach in program history. Given Rigby’s intentional preference for rebounders in building the program, it’s fitting that Dyer would hit a related milestone on the same night that happened.
Huge night for Denker
Northern Colorado did a whole lot of scoring against Sacramento State, putting up 95 points, and all those points were spread out. As a unit, the Bears shot 56% and sank 11 3-pointers on 34% shooting, making it an efficient night, to boot. Senior forward Brock Wisne and sophomore forward Ring Nyeri both logged double-doubles, with 29 points and 11 rebounds and 12 points and 11 rebounds, respectively. Senior guard Zach Bloch had 17 points with 2 rebounds and 3 assists, and the only reason his shooting was worse than that of his teammates’ percentage-wise is because he shot from beyond the arc 15 times.
The player that helped make all of this happen was senior guard Quinn Denker, who had 22 points of his own on 9-for-14 shooting, along with a Division I-high 16 assists. Denker had 7 boards, too, as well as a steal and block each, but it’s the dimes that stick out both for the facilitating and because 16 set a new program record for Northern Colorado.
The Bears would win their fifth-straight, which has them, all of a sudden, 6-7 in Big Sky play, and nearly a top-150 team in the NCAA Evaluation Too, or NET. That’s not going to get them an at-large bid as a bubble team, but it adds all kinds of intrigue to the fight for the conference’s automatic bid.
[Get to Know a Mid-Major: Big Sky]
Dominance from Goebel
Northern Iowa senior Ryley Goebel had an incredible game against Indiana State. The 6-foot forward played 32 minutes and scored 32 points on a highly efficient 12-for-16 shooting, but she also had a double-double thanks to 16 rebounds. On top of that, Goebel had 2 assists and 3 steals, as well as 5 blocks, the most of anyone in Division I on Thursday, tied with Mississippi’s Latasha Lattimore and Missouri State’s Michael Osei-Bonsu.
Goebel’s overall performance was so much more complete, however, enough that her GameScore of 36.7 outpaced not just Olivia Miles’ 40-point game, but also Darin Smith’s and that of everyone else in D-I, men or women. That includes Mia Nicastro’s 37-point night for Western Illinois, Megan Norris’ and Zay Dyers’ absurd double-doubles, Mikayla Blakes’ performance against Texas, all of it.
Goebel is leading the Missouri Valley Conference in blocks per game for the second year in a row — and is tied with Merrimack’s Oralye Keifer for 8th in all of Division I at 2.5 per game — while also leading the MVC in field goal percentage (58.3%) and effective field goal percentage (58.9%). She’s having a great season, and with the 91-79 win Northern Iowa finds itself 8-6 and fifth in the MVC.
Tennessee rebounds
It’s been a rough road for Tennessee of late, with the Lady Vols getting crushed by UConn in the most lopsided defeat in rivalry history before South Carolina made things even worse with a 43-point win. Tennessee took on bubble team Missouri on Thursday in a matchup that could have made the season much better for the Tigers and flat-out awful for the Lady Vols, but the latter was up to the challenge. The Lady Vols dominated, 98-53, shooting 52% overall with 10-for-29 from 3, while crashing the boards to the tune of 49 rebounds to 30.
The starters were great — all but one scored at least 14 points, while senior forward Janiah Barker had the game-high with 22 — but it was the performances off the bench that elevated the win for Tennessee. Freshman guard Deniya Prawl scored 13 points with 10 rebounds for a double-double in 21 minutes, while fellow freshman guard Jaida Civil just missed her own with 8 points and 10 boards in 20. The bench had 26 of the Lady Vols’ rebounds — more than half — while also logging 6 assists with 6 steals and a block in 96 minutes. And again, Missouri isn’t some top-250 team: it ranked 71st in NET before this disaster game where Tennessee gave the bench plenty of shine shot the Tigers back to 79th. Tennessee, meanwhile, recovered some of what it had lost the past couple of weeks, moving from 22nd to 20th in NET. The Lady Vols might be vulnerable to the best of the best in D-I, but it still has a shot at playing deep into March if it can fully recover from its rough February.
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